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Filed under: Business, Office, Microsoft, Commercial, Beta

Sandboxing adds extra layer of security to Microsoft Office 2010

Many of you already know about sandboxing and why it's useful. For those of you who don't, a sandbox (wikipedia article) provides an added layer of security on your computer by running unfamiliar code in an isolated space. Security threats change rapidly, and it's become virtually impossible to stay ahead of the bad guys (or even hot on their heels).

Sandboxing can help level the playing field. Several popular applications make use of a sandbox - Google Chrome, for example - and many programs can offer that kind of protection for your whole system.

Office applications are becoming an increasingly popular target for malware developers. As Microsoft puts it on their Engineering blog, "as the security landscape has been changing, Office has had the misfortune of becoming one of the next big targets for hackers to attack. They have been going after many of our file-format parsers and how we read Office files. They're looking for ways to exploit bugs and to get their code running on your machine."

The time to add some updated security kung fu to Office 2010, and Microsoft has decided on sandboxing. "We have done a lot of work to find and fix bugs, but we can't find everything. We have to take a more proactive approach and build Office to be more resilient to attack."

Office 2010 will feature a "a layered defense that Office documents have to go through as part of the File Open process." Even if you were to receive an Excel worksheet with malicious macros, Office 2010 should prevent them from doing anything shady.

It's certainly encouraging to see companies getting proactive about security. Here's hoping we're witnessing the start of a trend.

[via The Register]

Filed under: Security, Utilities, Windows, Commercial, Freeware, Lists, Windows x64

Five sandboxing apps to protect your Windows computer

System admins and technicians deal with a number of frustrations in our daily work. One of the biggest: desktops that keep getting misused, abused, and trashed as a result of carelessness, malice, or a lack of common sense.

Sandboxing programs are a great way to prevent these kinds of headaches. What do they do? In simple terms, they prevent applications from making changes to your system. It's kind of like having an imaginary hard drive where programs think they're operating like normal, but their actions never make an impact on your real filesystem.

Here are five options available for Windows systems to get the job done. These apps are great not only for the workplace or situations where you're looking after public or shared computers, they're also a fantastic way to protect your home computer from unwanted changes due to accidental misuse and malware.

Read more →

Filed under: Google, Googleholic

Googleholic for April 22, 2008

Googleholic for April 22, 2008
Welcome to Googleholic -- your bi-weekly fix of everything Google! In this edition:
  • Google named world's most powerful brand
  • iGoogle gets developer sandbox
  • Google celebrates Earth Day
  • WHOIS OneBox graces Google search once again

Read more →

Filed under: Internet, Security

Protect your browsing session with Sandboxie

Sandboxie
There's no replacement for good anti-virus and anti-spyware programs. But if you want to be super-certain that you're not downloading anything dangerous next time you open your web browser, there's one surefire way to protect your computer: make sure you're not writing anything to your system.

Sandboxie lets you do this by setting up a sort of virtual hard drive that's separated from the rest of your disk space. When you install or launch a program from within Sandboxie, anything you download will be written to the Sandbox. If you download a file and want to move it to your unprotected hard drive, you can do that. But if your web browser, instant messenger, or e-mail client contracts a nasty virus, your computer will be safe and you can just delete the infected files from your Sandbox.

The one down side is that it takes longer to launch programs within Sandboxie. But once they're up and running you shouldn't notice too much difference between the applications you're running from Sandboxie and any other application on your desktop.

If the whole concept sounds familiar, it is. Last week ZoneAlarm launched a public beta of ForceField, an application that does basically the same thing. The main difference is that ForceField is a commercial application (when it emerges from beta it will cost $30), while Sandboxie is free. ForceField does have a more polished interface and to be honest, we'd be more likely to install it on mom's computer than Sandboxie. But if you're looking for a security solution and you have some technical chops, Sandboxie might be worth a looksie.

[Thanks BeechSundowner!]

Filed under: Internet, Security, Features, Windows, DLS Interviews

ZoneAlarm ForceField protects your browsing session - DLS Interview


ZoneAlarm has launched a public beta of a new security tool that basically puts your web browser into a sandbox. Visit sites you know are unsafe, check your bank statements on a computer that you know is infected with viruses and spyware.

We caught up with ZoneAlarm Director of Consumer Product Management John Gable at ShowStoppers in New York, and he told us a bit about the new product. ZoneAlarm ForceField sets up a "virtualized surfing" system, that prevents your PC from downloading malicious code from the web. It also prevents keylogging, blocks spyware, and scans downloads. There's also a private browsing feature that immediately erases all details of your browsing session once you shut down the browser.

ZoneAlarm ForceField is free while in beta, but will cost $30 when it's officially launched next year. The program works with Internet Explorer and Firefox (but not Opera), and is Windows only.

Filed under: Business, Design, Developer, Internet, Web services, Google

First look, Google Mashup Editor

first look at the google mashup editorAt the Google Developer Day a little while ago, Google announced a Mashup Editor that they were releasing. It was by invitation only, and known as an interactive development environment that would allow users to edit, compile, test and manage applications.

We recently got the opportunity to check out the interface, and play around with it a bit. The Google Mashup Editor is built off of an AJAX development framework, and supplies users a set of tools that users can quickly and easily create simple web applications, smashups, and Google Gadgets using Google's applications like Google Maps. As long as you have a familiarity with XML, JavaScript, CSS and HTML you can build smashups. Of course there are ways that advanced developers can take advantage of the Smashup Editor, and its starts with using the JavaScript API.

After a smashup has been created using the reusable modules, users can test it in the Sandbox, and then publish it to a sub domain under googlemashups.com. Google does all the work there, from setting up the server, hosting, database and authentication.

Check out some samples of smashups created with the tool:

Got a Google Mashup to show off? Drop us a line.

Filed under: Design, Blogging, Productivity, Web services, Google

Google AdSense Preview Sandbox 1.0



Getting your website or blog ready for AdSense isn't always a picnic, and trying to peg the right keywords to generate the best ads for your audience can often prove to be a cryptic game of whack-a-mole. Sure, Google offers their own basic sandbox for building your ad units, but they don't really help you with either of the aforementioned tasks.

Thankfully, Amit Agarwal has stepped up to the plate and offered the Adsense Sandbox, a simple tool that allows you to quickly see 20 text ads, as well as Adlinks and Rich Text Ad results (images and videos) for a particular URL or keyword(s). As a particularly nice touch, Amit even included the ability to change your country to ensure the most accurate URL and keyword results for your neck of the woods.

Filed under: Internet, Web services, Social Software

Should hot new web services offer a public sandbox?

Should hot new web services offer a public sandbox?Steven Frank, founder of Mac software company Panic Inc., certainly thinks so, and I agree. With the slew of new web apps that are being introduced almost on a daily basis, it's becoming a pain to create a registration for each one, verify, then jump back in to finally start playing. Not to mention this process completely breaks that initial 'ooh, a slick new [insert service here]!!' excitement.

I think it would be great if these hot new web 2.0 startups would offer a public, no-registration-required sandbox to further boost their convenience and cool factors, but what about you, DLS readers? Are we splitting hairs here, or might this be a good idea? Sound off.

Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

View more Time Wasters

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